


This Horrible Library

by derwentian



Category: Heaven's Vault (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-15 22:15:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18678409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/derwentian/pseuds/derwentian
Summary: One thing about nerds is constant: they either over-organize or under-organize. Aliya and Huang lean toward the latter and are both hypocrites.





	This Horrible Library

**Author's Note:**

> I think a lot about how much time it takes Huang to find reference material for you when you check artifacts, and then I thought about what a mess Aliya's own books are on the ship, and this just sort of happened.

It is a well-established fact that whenever Aliya brings Huang an artifact to examine, he usually has something similar on file for her to examine in turn. It is also a well-established fact that whatever he’s looking for is in some inscrutable location that can be only be found after at least ten minutes of searching—sometimes five if Aliya helps, or thirty seconds if Six gets fed up and finds it themself (how exactly they do that is a mystery they refuse to explain).

Today Huang is having such trouble finding what he’s looking for that Aliya has given up and taken a seat at his desk, chair tilted back precariously (despite Six’s protests). “How is it that you can never _find_ anything in here?” Surely he should know where the book of god-figurine inscriptions is by now, with how often he has to consult it for her.

“Well, all the books on this bookcase look alike since I sorted them by color. I have to check all the blue books,” Huang says, in the process of glancing over two shelves’ worth of blue books.

Sorting books by color is perhaps the least effective organizational method Aliya’s ever heard of, but Huang’s just like that sometimes. “You know, sometimes I wonder if you make your library impossible to use on _purpose_ so people won’t come _pester_ you for things.” If she recalls correctly, Huang never actually wanted his office to be one of the University’s libraries. They just declared it one after he collected so many texts that he had more than one of the _other_ libraries.

Huang makes an ambivalent humming noise without looking up from the shelves. “I wouldn’t say I do it on purpose, no. But it certainly doesn’t _hurt_.” 

“It hurts _me_ ,” grumbles Six from their spot beside Aliya’s (Huang’s) chair. “This process is agonizing to watch.”

“Then show him where the book is.” The chair tips back a bit too far, but Aliya catches herself on the desk before it topples.

“And encourage this system to continue? Absolutely not.” Six makes a whirring noise that Aliya has come to interpret as a disdainful sniff. “Honestly, mistress, the only library I have seen in worse disarray would be your own aboard the _Nightingale_.”

At that, Huang abandons his search and drifts back over to the desk. “Oh? Is that _hypocrisy_ I detect? Tell me more, Six.”

Despite not moving at all, the air of smug victory from Six is overwhelming. They’re good at that. “It is absolute chaos. I believe it would be better understood if you simply _saw_ it.” 

“What, you’re inviting people onto my ship now?” Six nods. Not that she minds, really. If anything it’s odd that she’s never invited Huang aboard before herself. “Well, alright. How about it, Huang?”

Huang holds up one hand in a halting gesture, then grabs his mug from his desk and finishes his drink. “There. _Now_ we can go. I’m very curious about this horrible library of yours.”

If Huang has ever used a hopper before, Aliya’s never heard about it. She’d assumed that he’d never left Iox before, since Loopers are generally averse to interplanetary travel—Myari’s lectures about the rivers being bad for the soul come to mind. Huang seems to be taking it fairly well; at worst he looks vaguely queasy from the hopper. “Well, Aliya,” he says, casting an appraising eye over the _Nightingale_ , “I don’t think you have any right to criticize my library setup ever again, actually.”

Aliya can’t help but look indignant at that, even though she knew it was coming. “What? What’s wrong with _mine_?” A silly response, really. Walking right into whatever Huang has to say.

“Where do I start? Should I address the shelves or the stacks, _multiple_ , on the _floor_?” He points at one such pile of haphazardly stacked books, which comes up to his knee. “My library may not be the most well-organized, but at least all my books are on _shelves_.”

He’s got a point there. “Yeah, well, those ones don’t fit on my shelves.”

Huang blinks. “They don’t fit?”

“Yeah.”

“They don’t _fit_?”

“You heard me.”

After a long moment, Huang turns, walks to Aliya’s wall of bookshelves, and gestures wordlessly at the empty spaces between the various clumps of messily-arranged tomes. He continues to gesture with increasing vehemence for a good ten seconds.

Aliya huffs. “I meant they don’t fit _categorically_. Yeah, I _could_ shove them in, but they don’t go with anything else. It’d be messy.”

“Messier than precarious stacks on the floor, mistress? Stacks that can be easily toppled by, say, a robot jostled to and fro by the rapids?” Six chimes in, with the smug tone of a robot who has knocked those piles over several times. Traitor. There’s no good rebuttal to that, so Aliya just scowls at them.

“Thank you, Six. So what you’re saying, Aliya,” Huang continues, fiddling with a lock of his hair as he often does, “is that you’ve got thirty-some-odd books sitting on the floor of your ship where they can be damaged, because your categorical system is outdated.” 

“That’s right.” It’s been working out pretty well so far, Six knocking things over aside. And that’s Six’s problem anyway.

Huang gives an exaggerated shudder. “How gruesome.” His eyes dart around the shelves, and Aliya can see the gears turning in his head as he tries to decipher her organizational rationale. “You’ve got these sorted by topic?” Aliya nods. “I see epigraphy, astronomy, Elborethian history…“

“Don’t forget all the textbooks Myari gave me that I’ll never read but are too expensive to throw out.”

That one earns a small chuckle—which, from Huang, is more of a loud exhale. “You could always donate them to the library, but then they would just be _my_ problem instead.” He pauses, noting the sheer magnitude of the aforementioned category. “Actually, don’t. If I had to store all those I might end up putting things on the floor too.”

“You see? It’s just a space problem, that’s all.”

“No, no, you’ve got plenty of space. You’re just not storing things efficiently.” He’s hardly one to talk about _efficiency_. Last Aliya checked, Huang sorts the books in the library by color on one bookshelf and by alphabet on another. “You’d have lots of room for new categories if you’d just put all your books upright instead of cramming them in sideways and slanted like that.”

He has a point, but… “True, but then it would be so bland-looking. No visual appeal at all.” What’s the point of having shelves full of books if they aren’t nice to look at?

Huang looks mildly confused. “Aren’t the spines appealing enough? Here, look. Let me put some of these up there.” He scoots in front of Six by the forlorn floor-books and crouches to grab a few, but something makes him freeze in place. “What is _that_?”

 _That’s_ hardly a good thing to hear on your own ship. Six cranes around to peer at whatever Huang’s looking at from over his shoulder, then rolls off with an unhappy buzzing noise. “Your _pet’s_ made an appearance, mistress.”

Is that all? “Is that all?” Aliya comes and kneels beside Huang, either ignoring or unaware of his increasingly confused expression. “You had me worried there for a second. Where is he?”

“He?” A brief moment of bewilderment before Huang points at a striped yellow-white gecko clinging to the side of one of the book stacks. “He’s there.”

Very carefully, Aliya reaches out to the gecko, praying that just this once he’ll actually do what she wants him to and make her look impressive. By some miracle, the gecko skitters into her palm and stays there. “There we go.”

“What _is_ that?” Huang has something like awe in his voice as he adjusts his glasses and peers at the lizard.

“ _This_ is a gecko. _My_ gecko. I got him on Renaki.” The gecko licks its left eye and tilts its head to face Huang. “He eats bugs.” 

Huang stews on that for a moment, grinning. “What a lovely creature!” If he hears Six scoff behind him, he ignores it. “Did you name him?”

This is going to be the best part. Aliya’s been waiting for this since Huang first came aboard. “I did! His name’s Flatbed.”

A pause. In the corner of her eye, Aliya can just barely make out Six’s trademark sideward glance of annoyance. Huang blinks a few times. “Flatbed?”

“Flatbed.”

“Huh. Alright.” Before Huang can say anything else, Flatbed darts off Aliya’s hand and disappears behind the book stacks. “And there goes Flatbed. What do you suppose he’s up to?”

“The gecko is making a _summer home_ out of my internal workings,” Six fumes in a hilariously sour tone. “ _Evidently_ it is drawn to the heat given off by my mechanisms. Such is my torment.” Their posture hasn’t changed, but they somehow give off a sulky air all the same.

With a groan of being thirty and kneeling for far too long, Aliya stands back up. “Say, Six, why do you even _have_ enough spare room in there for a gecko to fit?” They don’t dignify her with a response, instead angrily swiveling in place to face the nearest porthole. “Were robots designed with bespoke lizard compartments?” Again they ignore her.

“Truly the ancients were wiser than we can imagine,” says Huang, who’s taken advantage of the confusion to start rearranging the bookshelves.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm pretty sure Flatbed was one of the canon name options for the gecko, but it ran off before I even got to name it because I was taking too long to decide. I almost tagged the gecko as a character but decided against it. (What would the tag be? Gecko (Heaven's Vault)?)
> 
> Comments and feedback are appreciated.


End file.
